Halo Infinite has, at long last, has reintroduced equipment. I’m sure we all know how they all work my now. There are currently 6 pieces of equipment in Halo Infinite, I will list them: The Grapple Shot, The Repulser, The Drop Wall, The Threat Sensor, Active Camo and Overshield. (we have also had the Thruster Pack confirmed in Gameplay by IGN) However, I think we all know that although all the other equipment are interesting, it’s the Grapple Shot and Repulser that steal the show. These two pieces of equipment are amazing, yet in their greatness they cast a shaddow over everything else. We have seen the Active Camo, Overshield and Thruster Pack before, nothing special & the Drop Wall and Threat Sensor are wholey unremarkable. The Drop Shield just feels like a worse version of the Bubble Shield and the Threat Sensor just seems like official wall hacks.
I have a way to fix this problem:
The Equippment should be graded into tiers of quality, equipment of a higher tier (and therefore a higher quality) should then be treated more as “power equipment” and be placed more infrequently around the map.
The Drop Shield and Threat Sensor need slight buffs. The Drop Shield could activate quicker than it actually does and could gain slightly more strength so it’s an equipment worth picking up. The Threat Sensor currently only tells the user if there are players within the sensor’s range, I think that the Threat Sensor could also do some electrical damage to players in rage of the sensor. This could give the user of the sensor addition reason to use it beyond it’s original pourpose (eg: shooting it into a crowd of players to weaken them or trying to hit a vehicle with it to eventually get an EMP on it.)
New equippment could be added that can fill all the new tiers of equippment quality. This could include a spiritual successor to that Promethian Turret from Halo 4. The power of this turret would dictate what tier the equipment would be in, I would say that it shouldn’t be very powerful, mainly because there are already a few high tier pieces of equippment.
That’s a lot of balancing suggestions for stuff we have barely used on any gametypes and maps.
I imagine the threat sensor will be very good at preventing slow standoff games. Slayer on Bazaar comes to mind. Dropshield will be very good in objective to prevent explosive damage. It’s proactive, not reactive. Stronger it becomes the more reactive it becomes.
I didn’t feel a desire to abandon all other equipment for the godly Grappleshot and Repulsor.
Drop Walls were fantastic when used preemptively, Active Camo is good for sneaking through the background of a fight, the Overshield… well, that one explains itself, the Threat Sensor could provide very powerful combat intelligence, and I can’t wait to see how the Thruster Pack handles.
Did they steal the show? Sure, I love those two. The repulsor a little less because I couldn’t figure out how to use it right during the flight, but they’re very good pieces of equipment. I just didn’t see them as inherently better than everything else.
I’ve used all of the equipment during Insider and even more now that the game is open to the public. I would like to address one of my major criticisms and that is Active Camo and Overshield being treated as Equipment instead of Power-ups. With 343i lumping them together, AC and OS are taking up two slots of equipment that we could have, such as rejuvenation field, gravity lifts, and so on.
My second compaint is that thrusters have made a return, my biggest problem with thrusters in Halo 5 is that with the clutter that 343i so often likes to add their map designs, I and others have lost a lot of kills because someone would simply thrust into cover after putting themselves into a bad situation. If you ask me thrusters need to be removed unless in customs.
Outside of that the remaining equipment works pretty well, Im not a fan of the grapple shot being able to grapple onto enemies, map objectives and vehicles. However I do enjoy its traversal mechanics much like the repulser. The threat Sensor is interesting and I believe that it should stay on Big Team and not in 4v4 slayer. The drop wall is fine for what it is but the bubble shield is far superior and I would like to see that return.
Overall I am interested to see how 343i handles the Equipment side of Halo Infinite and I hope to see more neutral equipment like we did with Halo 3. Most of 343i equipment has been single sided and the neutrality of H3 equipment added another layer of skill and timing that I would like to see return.